Roads Not Taken
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Anakin's fall could have been so easily avoided. Five AU's.


Roads Not Taken

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Star Wars

Copyright: George Lucas

1.

"My grown-up son," Shmi whispers, stroking Anakin's cheek with a trembling hand. "I'm so proud of you."

Then she's limp in his arms, her head falling back, and he feels her Force signature fade, like a star setting in the ocean. He came too late, his rescue mission failed. He feels rage like he's never felt before, feverish and sick, his vision narrowed to nothing but the streak of blood on his mother's motionless face. His hands itch to kill the monsters who did this, to slaughter them like an avenging angel. _Kill them all._

Only two things hold him back. The first is the imperative need to bring Shmi's body back to her husband and son, so that her death, if not her last months of life, can be accorded the dignity she deserves. Even Anakin might not be in shape for that after battling an entire tribe of Tusken Raiders.

The second thing is, quite simply, her last words.

Later that day, listening to Clieg Lars' eulogy, Anakin understands. His simple farmer of a stepfather's words reach him in a way none of Obi-wan's lectures or Yoda's spiritual jargon ever could: "You were the most loving partner a man could ask for. I know that, wherever you are, it's become a better place."

_"Rejoice for those who transform into the Force; mourn them do not, miss them do not"_ is one Jedi tenet Anakin has always found impossible to follow. But between denying Death and rejoicing in it, there's a middle ground, and it doesn't take a Jedi to follow it. Clieg, with his missing leg and years of hard work etched on his face, mourns his wife not by dwelling on the evils of her death, but by cherishing what was good about her in life. Anakin respects him for it with all his heart.

When Anakin's turn comes, he kneels before his mother's tombstone and bows his head.

"I love you, Mom. I don't know if I can justify your pride in me ... but I promise you I'll try."

2.

"But you said you loved me!" Anakin argues. "On Geonosis, right before we went into the arena! Are you saying you take it back now?"

"That's not what I'm saying," Padmé replies with enviable self-control, as cool as the blue lake shimmering behind her. They're on the same balcony where they first kissed, standing among columns of marble and baskets of roses. Even now, angry and hurt and confused, he can't help but admire how beautiful she looks in all this splendor.

"It's _because_ I love you that I refuse to marry you," she continues, her soft brown eyes pleading for his understanding. "You're honest, impulsive. You hate keeping secrets. Living with a secret this big, your whole life divided between me and the Jedi Council, would tear you apart."

"So I'll quit!" He throws up his hands, his metal prothesis gleaming hatefully in the sunlight. "Leave the Jedi Order. Marry you in the full sight of the galaxy!"

She shakes her head, one hand braced on the balcony wall, as if she, too, feels burdened.

"Being a Jedi is your life. You thrive on it – the duels, the flying, guarding Obi-wan's back. You could no more live without your calling than I could without mine. Don't you see? If you left them for me, you'd come to resent me sooner or later. You know you would."

He turns his back to her. Their age difference, which he'd almost forgotten, stretches between them like a desert once again. She was ruling a planet while he was still a slave child on Tattooine. She knows the world in ways he never will.

"Ani," she says softly, putting a hand on his arm to get him to turn around. "This doesn't mean we have to be strangers. Romance is the least of what we have. You've been my friend, the best and dearest friend I've had in a long time. We were a team on Geonosis, remember? We can still have that."

It hurts him worse than the phantom pains of his severed arm, but he knows what she means. Even after her rejection of his first declaration of his love, they understood each other. They laughed and argued and philosophized together; he comforted him after his mother's death; she fought by his side as a comrade-in-arms. There was more to what they had than sexual attraction. It would just have to be enough.

"If you put it that way, my lady," he says, with a crooked smile of resignation, "I understand. Your friendship may not be all I want, but it's more than I deserve, and I'm more glad and honored to have it than you'll ever know."

3.

"Kill him," Chancellor Palpatine orders.

Anakin hesitates, crossed lightsabers held to Count Dooku's throat. Remembering the agony of his severed arm, the phantom pains, the wasted time it took to get used to his prothesis which he could have used hunting Separatists, he's almost tempted. But the way Dooku's black eyes slide over his shoulder to Palpatine, the personal hurt and betrayal in them, drive any thoughts of cold-blooded murder right out of Anakin's mind.

"Master – "

"_Kill him!_" The Chancellor interrupts Dooku's plea, or accusation, with bared teeth and a predator's snarl. This is not the kindly statesman Anakin knows, and the transformation shocks him. He steps back, deactivating the sabers.

"I'm taking you into custody," he informs Dooku.

_To question him somewhere outside of His Excellency's hearing_, he adds to himself, behind the thickest mental shields he can muster. _So I can find out why, in the Force's name, the Chancellor's kidnapper calls him 'Master'._

4.

Anakin reaches the Chancellor's office just in time to interrupt a standoff: Mace Windu, deadly calm, purple lightsaber at the ready, facing Palpatine, huddled by the window. It looks bad, a Jedi Master threatening a terrified old man, and for a moment, Anakin's heart constricts in his chest with fear for his mentor. But his brain knows better: this is Darth Sidious, the Sith Lord who instigated the Clone Wars, who's responsible for the deaths of millions, who taught Darth Maul – Qui-Gon's murderer. This is no friend of Anakin's. This man has maniuplated him like a pawn in a game, and he's sick of it.

He sees the scorched bodies of fellow Jedi, classmates and teachers, littered around the room. He sees the Force lightning exploding from Palpatine's crooked fingers, sees Windu's face contract with pain and concentration.

"I have the power to save the ones you love!" Sidious howls.

"Why should I believe you?" Anakin retorts. "You've lied to all of us!"

"I can't hold on much longer!" Sidious changes tactics, looking impossibly pathetic, turning gray with exhaustion as he drains his own life energy to keep up the barrage of lightning. "Please don't let him kill me!"

Despite himself, a spark of compassion flares up, and Anakin hesitates.

"Can't you put him on trial?"

"He's got the whole Senate in his pocket," Windu replies, as matter-of-factly as one can while blocking deadly electricity with a lightsaber. "He's too dangerous to be left alive."

It's an ugly prospect, but Windu is right. Anakin grits his teeth, draws his lightsaber, and tries not to think of Padmé's dying sobs from his nightmares.

A moment later, Sidious' façade of weakness is dramatically cast aside, but even he cannot keep up two simultaneous streams of Force lightning for very long. Windu and Anakin combine to pitch him out of the shattered window; twenty floors below, they sense what remains of his life guttering out, like one of the cheap, filthy light fixtures in Watto's shop.

They are deeply silent for a moment, their heads bowed. He has the confused impression that he ought to be feeling something – relief? guilt? sorrow? – but all he feels is tired.

"I believe you just fulfilled your prophecy," says Master Windu, a touch of respect in his voice for the first time Anakin can remember. "The Council will _have_ to grant you your Mastership after this."

"I don't care about that," and to his distant surprise, he really doesn't. There are some prices too high to pay for power.

"I know you were close to him, Anakin. I'm sorry it had to come to this."

"So am I."

5.

"You were my brother, Anakin." Obi-wan's voice cracks with sorrow, exhaustion, and the heat of Mustafar. "I loved you."

It is that love which prompts him to be merciful, in the only way he still can. Even though his heart is screaming for him to pull Anakin out of the ashes, he knows that it would only delay the inevitable; his apprentice is too far gone into the Dark Side, into his hatred of the Jedi in general and Obi-wan in particular, to be redeemed. Another part of him, possibly his own dark side, is prompting him to simply let Darth Vader burn. _Let him die slowly and in agony for what he did to Padmé, to the younglings. Don't sense him, don't look at him. Get away from here, as fast as you can. _

But instead of either of these things, he moves back down the hill of ashes to standnext to the smoldering shell below him. With a heavy heart and a silent prayer, Obi-wan's lightsaber comes flashing down, taking off his brother's head with one quick blow.

"Forgive me," he whispers, hurrying back to Padmé's ship, not even knowing whether he's addressing her, the dead man, or himself.


End file.
